This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. I've forgotten your customs. Anyway, it's nice to be here. I kind of grew up in this temple. This is my home temple. first came to Zen practice at Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind Temple. Was I introduced?

[01:03]

Do you know who I am? I mean... Well, it doesn't matter really, but... I am from Green Gulch Farm. As Yunnan was sweeping the ground, his brother monk, Dao Wu, said, too busy. Yunnan said, you should know there's one who's not busy. And Da Wu said, well, if so, then there's a second moon. Yunnan held up the broom and said, which moon is this? As Yunnan was sweeping the ground, his brother monk Da Wu said, too busy. Yunnan said, you should know there's one who isn't busy. And Da Wu said, if so, then there's a second moon. Yunnan held up the broom and said, which moon is this?

[02:04]

So when I'm preparing to give a talk, I feel grateful for the opportunity to reflect on what Zen Buddhism has to do with my actual life. You know, teachings like this one. Because Quite honestly, between lectures, I don't spend a lot of time reflecting on teachings like this one. I'm kind of caught up in the swirl of events. Answering the phone, checking my emails, going to meetings, getting in my car, cleaning the house, much like, I'm sure, all of you. Bobbing along in the swirl of events. So when I do have a chance to reflect on myself and my life and how I came to practice, it's a really wonderful thing.

[03:10]

Because I realized what didn't bring me to practice was getting up early in the morning, or even long periods of intense meditation, or even profound teachings of the Buddha. It was none of those things. What nailed me to the Buddhist tradition was a small vase of wildflowers sitting on a bedside table at Tassahara when I first went there as a guest student the summer before my 30th birthday. I stood there, and I'd been sent to clean this cabin, And I walked in, and there on the table was this vase of flowers. And as I stood there, suddenly it felt like I had all the time in the world. I felt calm. I felt happy.

[04:12]

I felt free. And I didn't know this story about Yunnan and Da Wu, but had I known this story, I would have said, oh, there she is, the one who's not busy. Where has she been all my life? So that experience didn't last very long, even though I don't really know how long it lasted. It was a very fat moment. Because it was interrupted by the head of the cabin crew, who said, what are you doing? Standing there, not busy. So... I went back to work, sleeping and dusting and making beds, a dozen or so beds. But I didn't forget. Somewhere in a secret chamber of my heart was lodged this memory of that moment.

[05:12]

I would say that marked the beginning of what, for me, I would call my spiritual journey. I finally had found something in the world that I really, truly wanted. I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be free from the constraints of time and place and anger and sadness. And it meant for me, from that point on, it meant I wanted not to be busy. So I would imagine all of you have a similar memory of a time in your own lives, maybe your childhood, when the world sort of dropped away, the usual world. Maybe it melted or collapsed or unraveled in some fashion. And then suddenly at some point it reappeared and there you are sitting in your usual shape as you are right now.

[06:15]

So maybe this unraveling has happened for you more than once. Maybe it's even happening right now. But don't worry, because unraveling is the new normal. It's what we've come here to do. A very good friend of mine, actually of all of ours, many people in the world would say he's a dear friend, Brother David Stendelrost, who comes around Zen Center, he's now getting to be quite an old man, actually. It's kind of a shock. I knew him when he was maybe 50 or so. Anyway, he called these moments that we have spiritual emergencies. He said, you're emerging. Your spiritual life is emerging from under the covers where it's been hidden away. And he said, these moments are when the veil between the ordinary world and that more luminous world, the second moon, is suddenly lifted and we get a peak.

[07:22]

I think for a Christian, it might be like a moment in the presence of the divinity. Or we might call it samadhi, a kind of ecstatic trance. The word ecstatic is a Greek word that means the conjoining of the subject and the object. And then nothing else is there but that, as it seemed to me with those little vase of flowers, you know, just the flowers. No subject, no object. It's a pleasant feeling. Ecstasy, we use the word ecstasy to mean something very pleasant, as it is in all traditions, religious or secular. So, I don't know if any of you have read William James' Variety's Religious Experience. Anybody know that? Maybe not. Interesting. Page after page are testimonials of people who have had these kinds of experiences.

[08:27]

And depending on the tradition, most of what William James was recording were Christian people. And everyone had some amazing experience of light coming into their house or Jesus walked in the door or whatever. It seems that depending on your tradition, the visions will correspond. So for a Christian, obviously. God or Jesus, for Muslim perhaps it would be Muhammad, but for the Buddhists we see Kuan Yin and so on. We see the light. And sometimes these experiences may not be so easily recognized or so vivid. Some more subtle experience that you could probably trace back yourselves to a time in your life when you changed course. You know, a new episode began. Something turned you. Perhaps it was something really subtle.

[09:29]

And these moments are not moments that we plan for. You know, we can't invite them. They just kind of roll in at our feet. Some of them are terrifying. They leap in from the dark. And some are very gentle, very soothing, like a gentle hand on your cheek, a warm breeze. So despite what seem to be our similarities, each of us has a totally unique journey to take through this life and a unique set of moments. I don't know about the rest of you, but since I heard about Shakyamuni Buddha looking at the morning star and becoming enlightened, I keep staring at that star thinking something's going to happen. And I asked a teacher once, I said, well, what's with the star? And he said, well, that was his enlightenment. Each of us has something special that we can perhaps notice. It's our star, our personal connection with this amazement we call our life.

[10:35]

So thinking about these significant moments reminded me of a film I saw years ago and I'm very, very fond of called Afterlife. Anybody know Afterlife, a Japanese film? Curtis, do you know that one too? Anyway, the film originally was a documentary. These filmmakers were walking around the streets of, I'm not sure where in Japan, but they were interviewing people and asking them a very simple question. If you could choose one memory to have as your eternal moment, what would it be? So I thought maybe I'd invite you all to ask yourselves that question. If you could choose one memory from your life to live as your eternal moment, what would you choose? I'll give you a minute.

[11:40]

Think about it. Just pick one. So based on the very sweet answers that these filmmakers received from people on the street to this question, they decided to make it into a movie. And it begins with these people arriving in what looks like the entryway of a 1940s high school. You know, there's a desk and there's a person at the desk and then the people are coming in from the clouds. So they've recently died. And the person at the desk gives each of them a caseworker.

[12:43]

Actually, it reminds me a little bit of Henry Waves. So they give them a caseworker, and the caseworker helps them to decide what memory they want to have recorded. And then they spend a great deal of time trying to reenact that memory for them. They have a stage set, and they have all kinds of props. So the first person I remember is a young man who chose a moment he was... first learning to fly a small airplane, and the airplane went into a set of some clouds at sunset, and they were pink. The clouds were all pink. So he chose that moment, and they reenacted. They have the little plane, they have him in the plane, they have pink clouds hanging from wires on the ceiling. And at the moment when he says, he smiles, it's ecstatic. His face becomes quite ecstatic. They record that. And then later in the evening, they have him and the other people who've arrived sitting around in a little theater, and they show this film of his ecstatic moment.

[13:52]

And as they're showing the film, he vanishes from the theater, presumably into this eternal moment. And the next person is an old woman who remembers ballerina slippers when she was a child. And they have a little girl dancing in slippers, and that becomes her eternal moment. And there's a young boy, an older man who remembers as a young boy being in a trolley traveling through a bombed out city in Japan. And there's a crack in the window and he feels the breeze, a kind of spring breeze hit his cheek. And that's the one he wants to remember forever. So at the end of the film, the... story turns toward the caseworkers, and these are the people, perhaps maybe some of you, who couldn't pick a memory because they had died too soon. In fact, the one young caseworker was a soldier, and he died far away from his wife and unborn child.

[14:58]

So these are the restless souls. They're basically in purgatory, or what the Tibetans call the bardo, in between the worlds. and they're not able, they're perpetually busy, not able to settle, not able to land anywhere. So finally, there's a scene at the end where this young caseworker we've been learning about, the one whose wife had died, or he had died, his wife and child, he's sitting on a bench out in the garden in front of the building, and All of a sudden you realize that he's smiling, he has that look, ecstatic look on his face, and you can't see what he's looking at. And then the film shifts so that you can see behind him to what he's looking at. And what he's looking at are all the other caseworkers, his community of friends who he's been with, and he's smiling at them.

[16:02]

This relationship, his community has become for him that eternal moment. that he wishes to live in forever. Maybe kind of like this one right now. Sangha. So if I'd been asked to decide, I would have chosen the wildflowers for my eternal moment. Standing there at Tassahara, gazing at this little vase in there, I remember, I can remember it now as... It was oak grass, forget-me-nots, and California poppies. I mean, what could be better than that? The place where flowers in heaven don't fall, they don't wither, and they don't die. Eternal. That's what I wanted. And then I thought, but what about all those other moments, the ones that I didn't choose?

[17:05]

What have I been doing with the rest of my life? What about this one right now and all the ones in between? Why aren't these moments special and pure and clean and free of fear and anger and full of love? What is it that I'm doing to mess things up? So that's the question I want to talk about this morning. About these two moons. The one that's always restless, longing, searching, seeking. And the one that's radiant and free. And which moon is this one that we are in at this moment? There's a line from the Jumira Samadhi. Outwardly still while inwardly moving like tethered cults, trap rats. The ancient sages pitied them and bestowed upon them the teaching.

[18:11]

According to their delusions, they called black as white. When erroneous imagination cease, the acquiescent mind realizes itself. So in the story of the two monks, Yunnan is undoubtedly fresh from morning meditation. He's concentrating on sweeping, and perhaps it's his soji job. Many of you may have done soji this morning. So here comes his rascally friend, Dawu, to test his footing on the path. Too busy. Too busy. It's kind of a challenging thing to say to a monk, who I would imagine wishes to give the appearance of busylessness at all times. And I think for all of us who rush around in this postmodern world with our, you know, fast cars and computers, the idea of a monk sweeping being too busy seems utterly absurd.

[19:20]

So what are they talking about? So when I consider for myself what it means to be busy, I notice that it It's taking place in my hands and in my abdomen, in my breath, in my thoughts. It's where the busyness is happening. It's pervasive, pervades my body. Kind of overwhelming sensation of, you know, not getting it done, not finished. I notice sometimes when I walk that I'm leaning forward, you know, like maybe I'm I'm late for the next task. Maybe I think if I get my head there ahead of my feet, that'll help. Crossing that never-ending finish line. It's like a vanishing point. We're never going to get across the line. But I really don't know if I'm busy or not.

[20:24]

Those are the signs, but am I busy? Am I not busy? How would I know? There's no real gauge. on my energy consumption, there's no way to tell. You know, there's no warning lights to say, you know, better slow down. But it's just that strain, that subtle strain, you know, on the engine to continue with this metaphor of an automobile. And I wonder sometimes, you know, with the endless to-do lists and the seemingly unwinnable board game. You know, just what are we doing? What are we doing? Being driven. If Master Dawu came up to most of us during the day and said too busy, we'd probably have to agree. I'm too busy. I have no time for you now, Dawu. Go away. Don't bother me. And it's kind of interesting also because at that very same time that we may be feeling this anxiety of being too busy because it's a value in our society to be a good worker, a good student, and it's certainly a value at Zen Center, hard-working Zen students.

[21:45]

We dare not complain. And at the same moment that we're engaged in these activities, At the periphery of each activity, I think as all of you can probably sense as well, there's this kind of temptation, almost like an overripe fruit hanging from a tree, to just drop it. Just forget about it. Let it go. And dissolve the task. And just laugh at the whole silly business that we've got ourselves into here. There are a number of Zen koans featuring women and which when the women feel this kind of moment of, you know, liberation or insight, they knock over the cooking pot. I thought, that's great. Just knock over the cooking pot. Just knock it off the stove. And yet, you know, as tempting as that is, I can also see how that kind of giddiness is a form of busy too.

[22:54]

kind of youthful urge to escape from responsibility. We can all remember that one. And that Paul Simon song, you know, just slip out the back, Jack. Make a new plan, Stan. Don't need to be coy, Roy. Just get yourself free. I had a shirt I used to wear around Zen Center, actually. At one point in time, we were supposed to take ourselves very seriously because this place was falling apart. So the motto was, you know, take responsibility. So I had this shirt with a little guy running on across the front, and it said, escape from responsibility. However, it didn't say escape to where. So that was the one problem with that. Escape to where. So if being driven and being giddy are just two more types of busyness... And maybe the second moon is this rather cold and clear state of consciousness that we call, you know, samadhi, beyond perception of pain or pleasure.

[24:07]

You can read about it in the old suttas. It's a trance, a powerful trance. It's that singular moment in heaven where flowers don't fall, and weeds don't spread. And what could be wrong with that? The one who isn't busy, who isn't bothered, and who isn't even there. Blown out, which is one translation for the word nirvana. So having chosen such an eternal moment for myself, the one with the wildflowers, I began to reconsider what this attraction to eternity was all about. And I decided that it was one of those two mistakes that the Buddha warned the monks against in the very first sentence of his very first sermon. He said, Bhikkhus, there are two extremes that ought not to be cultivated by one who has gone forth.

[25:15]

What two? There's devotion to the pursuit of pleasure in sensual desire, which is low, coarse, vulgar, ignoble, painful, and harmful. So that's the eternal. Eternalism. Eternal pleasure. Eternal happiness. Heaven. And then, the other extreme is a devotion to self-mortification, which is painful, ignoble, and harmful. That's what's called nihilism. Nothing. Nobody. The middle way, discovered by the awakened one, avoids both of these extremes. It gives wisdom, it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to nirvana. So the Buddha is basically upholding the two ways that we humans try to avoid the messiness of our human lives, the complications of being alive.

[26:20]

We try to escape running to one side or the other. I'll have everything or I'll have nothing. One side's the dream world of emptiness, as in nothing, and the other side the dream world of eternity. So with this... teaching in mind, I wanted to ask again the question that I asked at the beginning, you know, what does the teaching have to do with my actual life? How am I understanding and informing my actual life by these words and these teachings of the Buddha? Some of you know me somewhat, and some of you don't. Probably have never seen me before. So I thought I would briefly say something about my life. as it goes flying by. I have a family and my long-term relationship with Dr. Grace Damon and who I raised a daughter with.

[27:29]

Her name is Sabrina. She's now going to be 23 pretty soon. And a dog named Mac and two cats. And about eight years ago, Grace was driving home... from San Francisco with Sabrina and Mac in the car, and she got into a head-on collision on the Golden Gate Bridge. So when I first heard about this accident, this was one of those spiritual emergencies of the First Order. Time stopped. The place was irrelevant. There was just this story that I was hearing on the phone, and I kept thinking, you know, I started to bargain with the story. I thought, well, this just can't be true. I tried to run away. You know, that's the wrong number. It's not my family. This isn't happening. They're going to be fine. Just a few bruises. They'll be home later.

[28:30]

I was waiting for them to get home for dinner that night. But actually, there was only one moon illuminating... what became a very familiar terrain of emergency room and vigilance, tracheotomies and coma, and a whole entire year of hospitalization for Grace, who is severely disabled. Some of you may have met her. She's been really badly hurt, and she will spend the rest of her days severely disabled. Sabrina and the dog were okay. They came home the next day. So when I contrast my life now with the thought I had at Tassahara and that little vase of flowers, I really can see how deeply mistaken I was about the Buddha's fundamental teaching. You know, what I thought then and fervently believed was that Zen meditation was going to be the way out.

[29:35]

It's going to be the escape from suffering. You know, like a magical passageway to a safe and pure and pain-free world. Kind of another planet to partner with my second moon. Clean and calm and kind and warm and safe. Safe from terror. From illness. From grief. And all the while, I was overlooking and undervaluing this actual life, the very earth on which I walk, the earth that's in my hands, under my nails, on the tip of my nose, surrounding me at all times, this beautiful world, just as it is, moment by moment. I had thought that ordinary life was the shortest way to death by way of insufficiency and boredom.

[30:39]

And I was afraid of that. And so I ran and I ran. I ran around in circles, as it turns out. That's what samsara means, endless circling, around and around and around, looking for the way out. And fortunately for me, I've had some wonderful teachers at the Zen Center over these many years. I'm particularly grateful to our former abbot, Mel Weitzman. I was down at Tassajara practicing for a while, and during one public ceremony, Mel was sitting on the high seat, and each of us went forward to ask a question. And when it was my turn, I said, dreams are sweet. I love to sleep. What do you have to offer? And he looked at me with this really mean look. And he said in a gruff voice, go wash your face. I was like, whoa. It's not what I was expecting.

[31:45]

But it was wonderful and horrible. I was so touched by the intimacy of that answer, by his presence, by him meeting me. And also I was kind of horrified because I knew I wasn't worthy of his trust. And I wouldn't be for a very long time because I was still infatuated with these kind of shamanic visions and beliefs that this kind of special world was waiting for me. I'd seen signs like the sun in the morning, the moon at night, just for me. So in this very case that I read to you at the beginning about Dao Wu and Yunnan, there's another saying in that case that the doings of childhood seem shameful when you're old. And indeed they do. Indeed they do. So I've spent now about 35 years in the service of my daughter and my friends and my community, my animals, various animals, my garden.

[32:48]

And I can actually see how my heart has been cranking open to this actual world and to actual people, the actual life that I have. And along with that, there's this kind of dumb, deep loyalty to the welfare of real people and real flowers that don't last forever. It's what makes them so precious. So busy or not busy, happy or sad, the proof, as my grandmother used to say, is in the taste and the odor and the aroma and texture of... the pudding, you know, right as you put it in your mouth. So I'm going to end with a poem by the wonderful Kay Ryan, former poet laureate of the United States. If she only had a minute, what would she put in it?

[33:51]

She wouldn't put, she thinks, she would take, suck it up like a deep lake. On her last instant, feast on everything she had released, dismissed, or pushed away. She would make room and room as though her whole life of resistance had been for this one purpose. So on the last minute of the last day, she would drink and have it, ballooning like a gravid salmon or the moon. If she only had a minute, what would she put in it? She wouldn't put, she thinks, she would take, suck it up like a deep lake. On her last instant, feast on everything she had released, dismissed, or pushed away. She would make room and room as though her whole life of resistance had been for this one purpose. So on the last minute of the last day, she would drink and have it, ballooning like a gravid salmon or the moon.

[35:00]

Thank you very much.

[35:29]

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